Reviews Around The Web

Thursday, January 29, 2009

This N7AD-SLI motherboard from ASRock certainly had potential to be what it was created to be: an affordable enthusiast board that, while not a top dog, would be a great overclocker, and a board that would allow for upgrades like SLI. Performance on this board was decent, but we were left wondering how much better it would have been if we had not had the limitations that we had in setting our DDR timings...

Monday, January 26, 2009

nVidia, for one, has developed a new chipset for the LGA 775, the nForce 740i SLI. They took the bridges c55 + MCP51, used in the nForce 650i chipset, and built around it a platform for an entry-level SLI motherboard, to complement the nF 750i SLI and nF 790i SLI boards. Our friends at ASRock are the first to build a motherboard from the 740i SLI, the N7AD-SLI. They also have launched their new quick-boot system, ASRock Instant Boot, on this motherboard. Read on as we look at this latest offering for the LGA 775 processor.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Thursday, August 14, 2008

It has been a short while since we have had an Asrock motherboard on our test bench. Today, we are ending that dwelt with the X38TurboTwins-WiFi. We know that the X38 is almost a thing of the past but for some of us it is the best priced way to get 16x across two slots when wanting to run a Crossfire setup. So read along as we take the X38TurboTwin for a ride.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

ASRock left the low-budget market and have entered the high-end market with the K10N750SLI-WiFi Socket AM2+ motherboard. The price of this board is noticeably higher than their usual prices. Of course, not without a reason, because this new ASRock board offers the fast nForce 750a SLI chipset, extensive overclocking settings and excellent equipment in a newly designed cardboard box. The packing is, of course, not the most important thing, but ASRock likes to deviate a little bit from their green color and shows that there is something completely new contained inside this box. Let us overclock some AMD processors with this motherboard and see if the higher price is justified.

The Penryn1600SLI X3-WiF motherboard is built on nVidia's nForce 680i SLI chipset, and as you may have guessed this platform supports Intel 'penryn' quad core, 45nm 'yorkfield' and dual core 'wolfdale' processors. Essentially, Intel's full family of 45nm quad and dual core chips, ranging from 800-1600MHz front side bus are spec'd out as compatible.

Friday, August 08, 2008

ASRock is a company whose goal is to bring motherboards with enthusiast class features to the mainstream market. Based in Taiwan, they offer a wide array of innovative solutions with the design concept of 3C, "Creative, Considerate, Cost-effective". ASRock aims to bring affordable motherboards without sacrificing performance. Today we are taking a look at the ASRock X48TurboTwins-WiFi. Based on the Intel X48 + ICH9R chipsets, this motherboard supports up to 8GB of Dual Channel DDR3 1600 and up to 4GB of Dual Channel DDR2 1066, ATI Crossfire, and WiFi-802.11g.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Over the past few months we have looked at a few different Intel X48 motherboards and all of these motherboards bearing Intel's latest chipset have worked quite well with Linux. Among these motherboards have been the ASUS P5E3 Premium, Super Micro C2SBX+, and Gigabyte X48T-DQ6. These X48 motherboards have been expensive, but now some of the budget manufacturers are introducing models at a lower cost. For just under $200 USD, ASRock has introduced the X48TurboTwins-WiFi. The ASRock X48TurboTwins-WiFi pairs Intel's X48 with the ICH9R Southbridge and offers a few extra features such as eSATA, integrated 802.11g WiFi, and IEEE-1394 Firewire.

Monday, August 04, 2008

Our good friends at ASRock feel your pain. Building practical solutions for tough problems into motherboards is what they are best known for, and they have just released what may be the answer to your problems, an Intel P45 board capable of running both DDR2 and DDR3 memory. This isn't a new idea, a few companies did the same thing with the P35 last year. Most attempts were less than awesome, but ASRock's board was clearly the best attempt. With this experience under their belts, ASRock has released the P45R2000-Wifi. Will it be the solution for those wanting a gradual crossover from DDR2 to DDR3? Keep reading to see!

At the 2008 Computex event, Intel officially took the curtains off its 4 series PCI Express chipset range which is set to replace the original 3 series of chipsets. Intel's 4 series not only brings Crossfire support to the mainstream, thanks to its ability to run two PCI Express x8 slots for GPUs, but it also adds PCI Express 2.0 to all of its 4 series of chipsets. That's right, even the low-end of the 4 series gets a new PCI Express controller hub. Today we have been sent two of the newest members of the 4 series family from ASRock, and they are loaded with features for the home user along with some nice overclocking for the enthusiast. Today we take a look at the ASRock P45R2000-WiFi and the P43R1600Twins-WiFi. How do they stack up? - Come and see with us.